Tag: climate change
-
Red Snow
Albedo is the fraction of solar energy reflected from the Earth back into space. The word stems from Latin and means whiteness. Ice, with snow on top of it, has a very high albedo. Red snow describes an area of ice polluted, as it were, with red algae. Red algae is typically a mix of…
-
Soap / Eternity / Rendering
INSTRUCTIONS ON A BAR OF NATIONAL SECURITY AGENCY SOAP Do what you want, live how you want. Get it behind your ears and all over the skin you want. Do not think about machines. Read what you will, focus your eyes on grime and slime and free will. Or grace,…
-
Lost in Fathoms
Stumbling dim across the surface of the earth: humanity. Our legacy not culture or religion or science, but ruin. Our lasting traces that of footprints, not brain waves. Is this what makes us unique? A geological force in our own right? Certainly this is the view announced in 2012 at the 34th International Geological Congress…
-
Life in a Time of Plenty, II
Part 2: Deluge When the rain came, it came hard. In hindsight that shouldn’t have surprised anyone: the Australian environment is not gentle. By the time then-Minister for Agriculture Joe Ludwig announced in March 2012 that federal drought assistance was no longer needed in Bundarra and Eurobodalla – the only areas still listed as being…
-
Life in a Time of Plenty, I
Part 1: Drought On New Year’s Day 2007, drought came to Melbourne. Water restrictions, previously moderate, were tightened, and overnight the residents of Australia’s second largest city found themselves in a water crisis: fountains stopped flowing, gardens went unwatered, and almost immediately the city turned brown. Water still came gushing out of the tap as…
-
Ending Ecocide in Europe
It’s strange to think that, although crimes against humanity are an established (albeit recent) aspect of international law, no such equivalent exists for the non-human. As Jacques Derrida puts it in The Beast and the Sovereign: “There is no ‘crime against animality’ nor crime of genocide against nonhuman living beings.” Ecocide is a crime, however,…